Beyoncé - The Lion King: The Gift

The Guardian 0

Her solo numbers are of varying quality, but Beyoncé gives a valuable platform to African artists in this collaborative Disney spinoff
(Columbia Records)

At first glance, The Lion King: The Gift doesn’t look like a new Beyoncé album so much as a demonstration of the singer’s astonishing star power. The Walt Disney Company is a famously unbending organisation, and yet Beyoncé appears to have got it to hand over the assets of the highest-grossing entertainment property in history so she can make an album, released in direct competition with the soundtrack of the new remake, complete with a cameo role for her seven-year-old daughter.

Initially, it seems as if Beyoncé thinks the US writer – who recently opined that what was wrong with The Lion King remake was that they hadn’t changed the plot so that Beyoncé’s character was the leading role and replaced the songs with songs by Beyoncé – had a point. Her album feels like an alternative soundtrack. The opening Bigger and Find Your Way Back seem like riffs on Circle of Life – the former a slightly rambling self-help ballad that kicks into life three quarters of the way through; the latter an understated pop track underpinned by a rhythm track inspired by Afrobeats.